Threads of Resistance:

Unraveling the Meanings of 19^th Century Tlingit Beaded Regalia

 

by

Megan A. Smetzer

 

The Tlingit, a group of Native Americans who reside in southeast Alaska, developed a great number of beaded objects in the late 19^th century, most of which have been ignored in the scholarly literature of the Northwest Coast.  This paper shall examine the origins and meanings of several types of beaded object including dance collars, tunics and hats, worn during important ceremonial events such as the potlatch.

Although not the first to make the connection, Ensign Albert Niblack of the U.S. Navy wrote most succinctly in 1888: “There seems nothing unreasonable in tracing the origin of much of the dance and ceremonial paraphernalia to customs originating in war.”[1]  Since that time, numerous scholars have suggested and disputed links between 18^th century carved and painted armor and 19^th century ceremonial regalia.  Following anthropologist Erna Gunther’s lead, however, scholars have explained beaded dance collars, for example, as mere disguises for western-style shirt collars.

By examining the changes wrought through colonial processes in the contact zone of southeast Alaska during the 19^th century, I shall consider in more detail the possible links between carved and painted armor and beaded regalia, and suggest that the layers of meaning are richer and more complex than previously believed, involving issues of hybridity, resistance, and identity construction.  I would like to suggest that the impact of colonialism, both Russian and American, spiritual and secular, changed the object of physical protection to one of cultural preservation.

 

 

Megan Smetzer, a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, is writing her dissertation on Tlingit beadwork production from the mid-19^th century until the present.  Her dissertation, titled Assimilation or Resistance? The Production and Consumption of Tlingit Beadwork, examines the ways in which beadwork, used in ceremonial events as well as made for sale to tourists, becomes the site for the negotiation of meaning across cultural boundaries.  In the past two years she has received the ACLS/Luce Predoctoral Dissertation Fellowship in American Art, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Art’s Chester Dale Fellowship, both of which have enabled her to travel throughout the United States documenting beadwork in museum collections and conducting fieldwork in Alaska.